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I hated Anna Karenina. I thought it should have ended halfway through when it was obvious the affair wasn't working and her husband was willing to take her back. After that, I didn't even feel the tiny bit of sympathy I'd had for her previously.
I have real problems with adultry.
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I loved the book. I hated the CHARACTER Anna Karenina... I couldn't wait for her to die. But the rest of the book I enjoyed immensely.
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Difficult in these various contexts can be good or bad or neither, but in reading LOTR, I called it difficult in the negative, because I found myself teary eyed at the thought of another discussion of someplace I had never heard of and would care nothing about in an hour. This aspect would not make the book difficult for everyone, so it is a value judgement pertaining to my own experience with the book, rather than a general observation.
Very helpful and insightful, Orincoro. Thanks.
I'm glad you mentioned Rand, Lisa! I devoured Fountainhead and loved it; but there's a copy of Atlas around here somewhere that I have started four or five times. *shrug* I'll get going on it eventually, but right now I feel it's one of those "classics I should have read" -- and not in a good way Posts: 431 | Registered: Oct 2003
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It's interesting to me how different people consider different books "difficult." I loved Perdido Street Station, Lord of Light, and LOTR, but for the life of me I can't keep interest in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, or The Baroque Cycle. I got about 300 pages into each one, and while the writing is pretty, just nothing is going on, and what is going on is complicated and doesn't seem to make much difference.
The entire series that begins with A Game of Thrones is one of my favorite sets of books ever. So much great stuff happens, you get to know the characters so well and care about them, it's just awesome. If you only read 30 pages, you're missing out.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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The most difficult I ever read was called 'Mei' (May) and was written by Herman Gorter. You've probably never heard about it. It's a poem that spans a length of 180 pages. I spent an entire two weeks holiday working my way through it and it'll be a long before I'll read that again.
Posts: 993 | Registered: Jul 2006
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"Difficult" can indeed have more than one meaning.
Let's see. Lord of the Rings was boring, that's why it was difficult. I really wanted to read it before the movies, and I managed to, but those descriptions almost killed it for me. Oh, and as I said in another thread, it dragged the ending like it was a "pay-by-the-page" kind of book.
Lem's Memoirs in a bathtub is difficult because it is full of contradictions, invented words, improbable situations, etc. You really have to make an effort to keep reading it. I don't know how to describe it better, but if you get your hands on it try reading 50 pages and you'll fully understand what I mean.
Other books are difficult just because it's not the right moment for me to read them. That's how it was with God-Emperor of Dune. Of course, after rereading the whole series I found a lot of things I missed the first time, but the other books had something that could keep me interested even when I was younger. So they were "easy" to read because my mind just skipped over the complicated bits.
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About rereading: I don't often reread books, since I always have a huge list of "to-read" ones. But there are some I do reread. The reasons can be quite different here too.
I might want to get a feeling of the author. That's why I've reread all my Ph. K. Dick books during a holiday. It really helps me see his grand themes, or make connections I haven't made before. Granted, Ph. K. Dick also had quite a unity of style and ideas throughout his books - at least from my point of view.
Or, I'm rereading a long series if the first time I read each book as they translated it. I've done this with Asimov's Robots-Empire-Foundation cycle (14 or 15 books in total) and it was a very gratifying experience.
As I said above, I might not understand the whole book the first time: this made me reread Dune. At first. Now I'm just rereading that series because it's one of the best ever and now I'm "free" to look at all the details since I know the core by heart.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Corwin: "Difficult" can indeed have more than one meaning.
Let's see. Lord of the Rings was boring, that's why it was difficult. I really wanted to read it before the movies, and I managed to, but those descriptions almost killed it for me. Oh, and as I said in another thread, it dragged the ending like it was a "pay-by-the-page" kind of book. heart.
So it wasn't necessarily bad editing that stretched the end of ROTK by a good 40 minutes. Seriously though, someone should have tried to reason with jackson on that one. True to the material yes, and the series deserved the oscar, but for gods sakes that ending was toooo much. On and on and on.
And on and on and on.
:music swells:
And on and OOONNN.
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Orincoro: No, it was good editing. They actually left out part of the plot from the book ending if you can believe it! :twitch:
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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War and Peace tops my list of favorite "difficult" novel.
I could never finish Ulysses by James Joyce. I have a hard enough time living in my own head. Reading that book is like living in six different peoples heads. And that's only 285 pages into it.
I'm honestly surprised by how many people have a hard time getting into LOTR. Silmarillion, I can understand, it took me a couple times for that. But the trilogy? Really? Maybe it's because my mom read them out loud to me when I was nine. Awesome bed time stories. I've been reading them every fall since then. It's actually about that time again, but I have to get through all this Dune stuff first. Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I have finished Dante's Inferno twice--once for class and once on my own, but I can't get through Paridiso and only barely made it through Purgatoro.
Either this means that there is more fun reading to be had with the sinners than the saints, or it predicts my own post-mortality future. I am hoping for the former.
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The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco takes unspeakable effort for me, but it's still a phenomenal book.
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They actually left out part of the plot from the book ending if you can believe it! :twitch:
